Watchmen WE WALKED OUT. Awful. Disgusting. Degrading. Vile. Barbarous. The kind of entertainment the Roman mobs were watching just before the barbarians came over the walls. Did I say depraved? I meant to. If you let your kids go to this piece of absolute unmitigated garbage, you deserve whatever nightmare lives they end up inflicting on you. I fear I haven’t expressed myself strongly enough… Ghost Town We stopped watching. After twenty five minutes when we realized we hadn’t laughed... Read more

A feature written and produced by Act One alumni Rajeev Sigamoney (WP ’02) and Dan Ewald (WP ’99) just got a  great review in Christianity Today.   The project is based on their hit web series (which had more than 500,000 views).  It is a mockumentary about Christians and the arts and features a top-flight comedic cast including Wendi McLendon-Covey (Reno 911), Jennifer Elise Cox (The Brady Bunch Movie), Joel McCrary (Princess Diaries), Octavia Spencer (Bad Santa), Mindy Sterling (Austin... Read more

I’m teaching today and then am going to have to disappear most of the week to work on writing commitments, but wanted to register a few thoughts about last night’s liturgy for Hollywood’s High Holy Day, the Oscar telecast. Overall, I thought it was a great show. The only real way I can think it might have been better was to have perhaps a bit more comedy from Jackman (he’s more of a showman than a comic), and then, of... Read more

I shocked myself this week by really enjoying Clint Eastwood’s latest offering Gran Torino. I thought it was charming in many places and it made me laugh out loud several times. The violence was surprisingly unbrutal for an Eastwood film, and most refreshingly of all, unlike almost all of Eastwood’s projects, Gran Torino knows what it is about storywise and thematically and stays on target. The film has none of Eastwood’s trademark, “character motivation confusion mistaken for internal conflict” that... Read more

Very, very spoilery. You’ve been warned. There have been some undeniably brilliant moments in the last few episodes of Season 4.5. “The Oath” about the squelching of Gaeta’s/Varek’s rebellion was as great as anything we have seen since Season One, or even those first amazing four episodes of Season 3… Remember those? Sigh… But the first few of the last ten episodes have been weirdly devoid of the answers that the show is going to have to provide if it... Read more

Here is an astounding piece by actor, Gary Graham (Star Trek: Enterprise), posted over at BigHollywood.com, about his journey from being a pot-smoking, baby-boom, free-lover and pro-choicer, into being a shell-shocked, “I killed my own children” pro-lifer. I can’t tell you how much courage it takes for someone in the Hollywood cosmos to say clearly and uneqivocally, “I don’t care that you think you need it. Abortion is murder.” God bless Mr. Graham. (Thanks to Jeff C. for the heads... Read more

Sometimes I live in the country Sometimes I live in the town Sometimes I get a great notion To jump into the river an’ drown (from the song Goodnight Irene, by Lead Belly) Oh dear. They blew it last night. The revelation of the final cylon was far from “a great notion” and seemed to me to be quite, thoroughly and stunningly lame. I was staring at the television in those last three minutes that the show ran long and... Read more

Still making my way through the stack of award screeners. I wish I could say I have found lots of movies to love, but my feeling is most of the critically acclaimed movies made in 2008 will be quickly lost to cinematic history. One can hope anyway. Let’s jump in… _________________________________________________Short Changed-ling Directed by Clint Eastwood, written by J. Michael Straczinski, starring Angelina Jolie and that cute guy from Burn Notice, Jeffrey Donovan Storyline: Every parent’s nightmare. The eight year... Read more

Happy Christmas everybody! I got back from Portugal on the 21st, and since have been making merry, praying and watching lots of “For Your Consideration” screeners. I must admit, I like the free screener part of being in the WGA very much. There isn’t time to do decent reviews of all the movies I’ve seen, and frankly many of them aren’t worth a serious consideration, and even more frankly, a lot of what I would want to say about most... Read more

Just so bad. Sooooooooo bad. I think the point here was for Anne Hathaway to prove she has “real” acting chops, by appearing in one of those quirkily brilliant little indie features. Oh well. This movie is not brilliant, and mistakes weirdness for quirkiness. And Hathaway really ends up just being wedged into a wincingly, embarrassing role that only shows she has very bad instincts in scripts. And somebody has to say it, with the year’s most god-awful haircut. I... Read more